Climate of silence: Pluralistic ignorance as a barrier to climate change discussion

On the basis of previous research, the authors hypothesize that (a) person descriptive terms can be organized into the broad dimensions of agency and communion of which communion is the primary one; (b) the main distinction between these dimensions pertains to their profitability for the self (agency) vs. for other persons (communion); hence, agency is more desirable and important in the self-perspective, and communion is more desirable and important in the other-perspective; (c) self-other outcome dependency increases importance of another person's agency. Study 1 showed that a large number of trait names can be reduced to these broad dimensions, that communion comprises more item variance, and that agency is predicted by self-profitability and communion by other-profitability. Studies 2 and 3 showed that agency is more relevant and desired for self, and communion is more relevant and desired for others. Study 4 showed that agency is more important in a close friend than an unrelated peer, and this difference is completely mediated by the perceived outcome dependency. (c) 2007 APA, all rights reserved.

Four studies examined the relation between college students' own attitudes toward alcohol use and their estimates of the attitudes of their peers. All studies found widespread evidence of pluralistic ignorance: Students believed that they were more uncomfortable with campus alcohol practices than was the average student. Study 2 demonstrated this perceived self-other difference also with respect to one's friends. Study 3 traced attitudes toward drinking over the course of a semester and found gender differences in response to perceived deviance: Male students shifted their attitudes over time in the direction of what they mistakenly believed to be the norm, whereas female students showed no such attitude change. Study 4 found that students' perceived deviance correlated with various measures of campus alienation, even though that deviance was illusory. The implications of these results for general issues of norm estimation and responses to perceived deviance are discussed.